July 2017

A Florida-based company has sued Apple for the Apple TV’s “what did she say?” feature. CustomPlay filed a patent for skipping back a predetermined number of seconds, temporarily enabling captions, and then disabling them after the predetermined time has elapsed, and has owned the patent since 1998. CustomPlay says they attempted to contact Apple starting in 2014, but without any response from Apple.

The iPod nano and iPod shuffle have been discontinued. Apple says it’s a move that’s designed to simplify the iPod lineup, which means just leaving the iPod touch in the ranks of what was once the world’s most popular personal audio player. You’ll note that the iPod lost its own header on the Apple homepage a long time ago in favour of “Music”, and now, the iPod touch starts at $299 for a 32GB version, with a 128GB also available for $449.

Rumours say the high-end iPhone that everyone’s been talking about won’t ship until later this year. It wouldn’t be surprising if Apple’s all-singing, all-dancing iPhone with all of the trimmings isn’t available until October through to December, which lines up with Apple’s Q1 2018. There’s also a high likelihood of a white model not being available at launch, just in case you thought stock shortages were going to be the only problem.

A variant of the Fruitfly malware that was blocked by Apple after its initial discovery earlier this year has been seen in the wild, and infects at least 400 Macs worldwide. According to Ars Technica, a security researcher was investigating the Fruitfly variant and discovered some hard-coded domains which hadn’t been registered — when the researcher registered the domains, almost 400 Macs connected, meaning that there may be many more out there which could be then used to spy on their users, capable of capturing screenshots, and recording keystrokes and webcam images. What’s even scarier is that the method of infection is currently unknown, as is the malware’s original purpose.

The latest renders of the next iPhone solve the problem of the sensor notch by seamlessly integrating the status bar into the black cutout. By hiding the carrier name and eschewing the time display altogether, it turns out you can cram the signal and data connection on the left hand side of the notch, and put the battery, bluetooth, and whatever other icons you might have on the right. It doesn’t look half bad, either.

On Friday Apple announced that Deidre O’Brien would become Apple’s Vice President of People. The press release announced that the nearly 30-year veteran would oversee all HR functions in the new role, including talent development, recruitment, and business support. The Mac Observer points out that due to O’Brien’s 30-year stint at Apple, that meant she has worked for five Apple CEOs, including John Sculley, Michael Spindler, Gil Amelia, Steve Jobs, and Tim Cook.

Daring Fireball’s John Gruber published a public service announcement yesterday about how you don’t need to force quit your apps on iOS. Apple exec Craig Federighi says that you shouldn’t force quit your apps and that it doesn’t help battery life, no matter what your local Apple Genius says about force quitting apps. A lot of hard work went into making iOS being memory and battery life-efficient enough to negate the need for force quitting apps, so don’t do it!

It’s time to pull your old devices out of storage, because Apple released iOS 10.3.3, macOS 10.12.6, and watchOS 3.2.3 overnight. Ars says the bug-fix releases are likely the last we’ll see before the public release of iOS 11 and macOS High Sierra, although security updates will still be released for these older versions moving forward.

Apple has previewed new emoji coming later this year. It’s unclear whether these will be included as part of iOS 11, but new emoji such as the humble sandwich, starstruck, zombie, and vomit will let you describe a whole new variety of situations. Apple’s App Store and iTunes Movies Twitter accounts also got in on the World Emoji Day action, sharing emoji versions of film titles.

It’s iPhone silly season, which means rumours and speculation about what will or what won’t be included in the next iPhone. John Gruber’s take seems to think that any speculation about hardware features this late in the iPhone’s development cycle is showing a lack of respect towards Apple’s iPhone development lifecycle. While it may be the case that iOS 11 support still isn’t there, any decisions about hardware to be included would likely have been decided months ago.